To Patrick Obahiagbon, from a kindred soul

Taxonomically, we cannot be classified as ornithological specimens. But you and I nevertheless share an identity of plumage in the sense that we have an abiding passion for the word, whether scripted or merely verbalized. This shared identity inclines us ineluctably, as the saying goes, to congregate in the same proximity.

I take the opportunity of this long-delayed correspondence, then, to impart the intelligence that I have long been captivated by the lexical dexterity, the hyperpolysyllabicsesquipedalian magniloquence that distinguished your orations on the floor of the House of Representatives in Abuja and other platforms.

The National Assembly building, vaguely evocative of the architecture of Augustan Rome, was supposed to radiate the aura of that epoch and capture something of the oratory for which it was justly celebrated. But that was for the most part a forlorn expectation.

You were the singular exception. In oration after oration, you mesmerized not just the House but the entire nation with your penetrating insights on a catholic range of issues, employing locutions that at once delighted, befuddled, entertained, instructed, and titillated.

Imagine, therefore, my discombobulation when, as a result of one of the perversities often thrown up by the process that is the preoccupation of psephologists, we found ourselves bereft of your perorations from that hallowed Assembly.

Since that lamentable discontinuity, nary a lexical spark to has been uttered on the floor or in committee to animate proceedings or galvanize the Assembly to rousing ratiocinations on the issues convulsing the polity. I harbor not the slightest doubt that a tracking poll would have registered a precipitous fall in public interest in the proceedings of the House from the moment it was deprived of your inspired and inspiring contributions on account of the perversity aforementioned.

Since then, you have only fleetingly and all too rarely favoured us with those breath-taking flights of oratorical virtuosity that distinguished you from your pathetically earth-bound contemporaries in and outside the Legislative Branch.

Drawing only on my personal recollection, I would say that you have rendered us very few such favours since the January 2012 public uprising against a phantom oil subsidy the Jonathan Administration, laboring under a misapprehension and hobbled by its overweening profligacy, asserted that it was going to eliminate.

Such gratuitous provocation surely warranted a comprehensive deployment of the biggest artillery pieces in your lexical depository, and you delivered magnificently in a spirited intervention that transported one right back to those halcyon days in the House.

“I have read with acatalectic disgust, governments asinine and puerile ratiocinations attempting to justiceate the proposed removal of subsidies from petroleum products,” you declared. “It has asseverated that its intentions are guided by the need to checkmate the odoriferous excesses of a Machiavellian and Mephistophelean cabal and I have said to myself, what a shame? What a self- indicting admittal of the failure of governance? What a hocus pocus? What an anathematous disdain for its citizenry?”

Exactly my own cogitations on that vexatious issue.

Those who cannot disentangle the rich layers of this lexical package to savour its even richer content can only excoriate themselves for committing their time and leisure to less ennobling pursuits than total and sustained immersion in a standard dictionary of the English language.

Such people deserve no commiseration whatsoever. Let them make the dictionary their inseparable accoutrement as is your custom if they want to be worthy of your attention.

There was also your posthumous disquisition of like vintage on the transition of the novelist, human rights crusader and stalwart of the university lecturers’ union ASUU.

“The grand initiation of Professor Festus Iyayi is a lancinating loss of another stentorian voice, against retrograde and prebendal forces of primitive mercantilism. That he passed through transition on matters pro bono publico, bears eloquent testimony to our state of dystopia. Such is the evanescence of life. It’s all vanitas vanitatum.”

No amplification is required here; res ipsa locutur.

Between the misconceived effort to eliminate a phantom oil subsidy and the demise of Iyayi, a glut of occurrences, a concatenation that is all too emblematic of the Nigerian condition, eventuated. But the public could not avail itself of your profound insights, your unique summative skills and the forensic proclivities that would have illuminated the occurrences to the point of incandescence.

To take as a point of departure the wanton provocation of attempting to eliminate a bogus subsidy: You will recall that, to assuage public denunciation of the galactic expenditure on the president’s foreign travel, Dr Goodluck Jonathan had solemnly covenanted to curtail his peregrinations.

That has gone down as another vacuous vow. Since then, he has grown exponentially more peripatetic, to the point that the 10 executive jets in his fleet — Air Jonathan, as some call it — can no longer accommodate his wanderlust. How did we land ourselves with another walkabout president?

Only a perspicacious commentator gifted with your formidable lexical and forensic skills can do justice to this executive restiveness and its attendant consequences.

Then there is the case of the minister, since defenestrated in a cabinet shuffle, and the armoured limousines she corralled agencies under her supervision to buy for her private use. Sustained demands for her dismissal fell on Aso Rock’s insentient tympanum, despite all its orchestrated ululation about fighting corruption.

Something tells me that your forceful intervention, delivered in locution that can move mountains, would have compelled the minister aforementioned to resign soon after the scandal broke, or driven Dr Jonathan to such high dudgeon that he would have convened a world press conference to personally announce her dismissal.

You would have denounced in the most stirring anti-colonial, anti-neocolonial, anti- imperialist language that Kwame Nkrumah would have been proud to claim as his own the very thought of celebrating the centenary of the dysfunctional polity Lord Lugard’s mistress christened Nigeria. On Boko Haram, you would have exhausted the vocabulary on nihilism.

On the Forest of Horrors recently uncovered near the Ibadan, just across from Nigeria’s busiest highway, and I suspect you would have dug deep to disinter from your repertory imprecations that would make those in the Old Testament sound like benedictions..

Which brings me, finally to the on-going confabulation in Abuja that is now called, not from an excess of admiration, I hasten to asseverate, the Jonathan National Conference (JNC for short). What do you make of its omnivorous inclusiveness, its inchoate agenda, and the obscene financial recompense pressed on the participants, many of whom pass their time sleeping or bickering over free food?

What is your construction on the “consensus” that is supposed to undergird decision-making at the confab? One commentator obviously lacking your analytical rigour and lexical acuity has called it “programmed gridlock.” I am sure you will have exploded, as only you can, the inanity of the whole thing and pointed out that if a consensus existed or could be fabricated on the key issues of national existence, there would have been no need for a conference

It is deeply to be regretted that your on-going exertions as Chief of Staff to His Excellency the Comrade Governor of Edo State Adams Oshiomhole have bequeathed you scant amplitude to share with the public your reflections on the issues of the moment.

Personally, I take consolation from the intelligence that you are keeping a private journal with your characteristic verve and lucidity, and that it will be made available to the attentive public as soon as you can extricate yourself from the labyrinthine bureaucracy of Edo State.

One thought on “To Patrick Obahiagbon, from a kindred soul”

As wise as you are how come one never heard of your flaming wisdom in any sphere of accomplishment? Not even in waec, or jamb, let alone your university if at all u attended any. It only when its time to throw mundane jibes at good old Jo’ that most of u illiterates suddenly becomes wise.